2/20/2015 - Friday after Ash Wednesday - Psalm 51:3-6, 18-19

    The refrain in today's psalm calls out to us today during these first few days of our Lenten journey:  “A heart contrite and humbled, O God, you will not spurn.” Indeed, in the twentieth and twenty-first century, there are many who do not have a contrite or humble heart before God.   One young man on the pilgrimage to Santiago, a brilliant law student from Geneva Switzerland asked me these questions as a priest: Why would someone go to your church each week?  Why would someone believe in God?  Whist difference does it make his life?  Here really was sincere about these questions.  So many in our modern world take the same stance.  So many in the modern world have spurned Christianity for secularism. 

       We have to be willing to open ourselves to God's grace, to be open to his will calling out to us in life.  As we begin our Lenten journey this week, we can listen to the words of Pope Benedict:  "Lent stimulates us to let the word of God penetrate our life and in this way to know the fundamental truth: who we are, where we come from, where we must go, what path we must take in life."  God's word needs to be able to penetrate our lives, to lead us and guide us and change our hearts.  If that I'd not the case, then we are not letting God be God.  We are not humbling our hearts. 

2/15/2013 – Friday after Ash Wednesday – Isaiah 58:1-9

        Most of us probably approach Lent each year pondering the 3 spiritual practices that the Church invites us to follow in recognition of this holy season of preparation: fasting, prayer, and almsgiving.  Each year that we approach Lent, we are at different points on our spiritual journey.  Thus, it is good for us to ponder anew each year how we are going to incorporate these spiritual practices into our Lenten observances.

         Today's readings challenge us to reconsider our notion of fasting, to re-envision fasting as a public response that involves both action and risk, to use this new vision of fasting to bring healing to our world. In Isaiah, God tells us, “This rather is the fasting that I wish: releasing those bound unjustly, untying the thongs of the yoke, setting free the oppressed, breaking every yoke.” In this new vision of fasting, we are to share food with the hungry, help shelter the homeless, and clothe the naked.

         If we accept the challenge God gives to us, to be the hands, the feet, the eyes, and the heart of Jesus that bring healing into our world, we are also invited to fast from those personal habits that keep us from a close relationship with God.  Perhaps some of us need to fast from those feelings of anger, resentment, selfishness, indifference, and apathy that keep us from a peaceful relationship with God & with our brothers and sisters.  By looking at changing these unhealthy attitudes that we have, perhaps we will be more prepared to reach out to others.  Perhaps by helping to free others from oppression and marginalization, we will also help set ourselves free.

         Many in our world, our neighborhoods and our communities are struggling from job losses and the economic conditions that are bearing down heavily in our present day reality.  As we journey through Lent this year, as we walk with Jesus on his journey to the cross, may we be in touch with those opportunities that will allow our light to break forth like the dawn, that will allow wounds to quickly heal, as expressed in the eloquent words of Isaiah.  As we journey together as a community of faith during Lent, may we stand in solidarity with God and with our brothers and sisters.